Ringwood murder-suicide sparked by gun dispute, neighbor says

A murder-suicide that left two men dead in a Cupsaw Drive home in Ringwood early Monday morning began with an argument over guns missing from the collection of one of the men, a neighbor said on Wednesday.

The neighbor, who asked The Record not to identify her by name, said that two young people who had been living with Seth Gunar in the home he rented ran to her house for safety after witnessing the shooting. In an email to The Record, she said they told her that Gunar, who was a gun collector, accused Christopher Coogan of stealing guns that were missing from his house.

Passaic County law enforcement authorities confirmed for the first time on Wednesday that Gunar was the shooter and Coogan the victim.

A chief assistant prosecutor, Michael DeMarco, said in an email Wednesday night that Coogan, who lived in Stony Point, N.Y., was shot multiple times and Gunar was shot once. Coogan was “the victim,” he confirmed, adding that authorities are investigating an argument that took place shortly before the shooting.

“I am aware of the argument that occurred just prior to the shooting,” DeMarco said. “We are continuing to investigate. We intend to release additional information when the investigation has concluded.”

Gunar, who was known to take in strangers, had been acting violently in the hours before the shooting, the neighbor said in the email. She later declined to comment further about the incident, saying that she had concerns about preserving the anonymity of the young people who were witnesses.

In the email, she said that they told her that Gunar slept with a gun on Sunday and fired a random round during halftime of the Super Bowl. Gunar was angry that guns were missing and accused Coogan of stealing them, the woman wrote. She wrote that Gunar threatened to shoot Coogan if the guns were not returned, “which is what he ultimately did.”

The two young people who showed up at her door early Monday morning told her they had fled the house in fear with only what they were wearing, one of them running into the freezing night in flip-flops, a T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

Gunar, an avid war and fantasy gamer, was described by friends as extremely intelligent, a gun collector who kept unloaded guns in a closet. DeMarco said on Tuesday that authorities are “actively looking into the weapons that were owned by Gunar.”

The guns included “classic old rifles that you couldn’t get anymore, made of fine wood,” said a friend, Manny Rivera, who frequently visited Gunar’s house. “He would show them off every so often,” Rivera said.

How Gunar and Coogan knew each other still is unclear. Gunar’s friends suggested he might have allowed Coogan to stay with him at his three-bedroom house, as he does even for acquaintances in need. Gunar lived alone with two cats, they said.

Friends described a man who was knowledgeable about a wide range of topics, particularly military history, and who loved playing games and building models.

Gunar would go to Fantasy Games, a game shop, about once a week to play Flames of War, a World War II-themed board game, Rivera, the manager, said.

Gunar had the same interests in high school, recalled Ian Post, a classmate of Gunar’s at Dwight-Englewood High School who said the two were friends for as long as he could remember because their mothers were childhood friends. They went to camp together and slept over at each other’s houses, Post said.

They both joined a club at school devoted to the military-strategy board game Diplomacy, Post said, and Gunar also steeped himself in Civil War history.

“He was a huge buff on that,” Post said.

Post and his sister recalled parties at Gunar’s Fair Lawn home, where his family had a pool in the back yard.

“They used to have these big swim parties,” Post said.

Post’s sister, Dana Adler, who graduated from Dwight-Englewood three years ahead of them, said: “They always had a ton of kids around.”

Post and Gunar drifted apart after high school, Post said, as Gunar went on to George Washington University, and then Rutgers School of Law-Newark. They hadn’t spoken in about 20 years, Post said.

Gunar worked as a teacher and lawyer. In April 2012, he was disbarred in New York State over professional misconduct charges. He had recently been looking for work as a teacher, Milligram said.

Coogan had run-ins with the law in Rockland County. Last month, he was arrested in Stony Point and charged with grand larceny after allegedly stealing a car. He was released on Jan. 29 on $3,500 bail, Rockland County jail records show.

In November 2011, a Rockland Country judge issued an arrest warrant for Coogan on four criminal charges of selling and possessing drugs, county records show. He was sentenced to five years’ probation and 210 hours of community service. Last April, the court determined he had violated his probation.

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